If Penn State coach Bill O’Brien has a soft side, he’s not showing it. His birthday was this week, and O’Brien pretty much ignored it. Bigger things, like beating Ohio State, are more pressing.

“I’m not a big birthday guy,” he told The Patriot-News. “My wife will list all the things I really don’t enjoy. Birthdays, weddings, theme parks, the beach.”

Were it not for a text from his brother wishing him a happy birthday, he says he wouldn’t have thought of it. Braxton Miller, for one, is consuming too much of his mind.

“This is a big game. For me to sit up here and say it’s not a big game, that’s crazy,” the first-year PSU coach told the paper. “This is Ohio State. Great tradition, great players, great head coaching staff. It’s a big game.”

“One of the keys to the game is to do the best we can to contain him and tackle him,” O’Brien told reporters. “At the end of the day he’s going to make plays and we have to play the next play…We have to make sure limit that and not dwell on the play he just made.”